The Audius platform may shake the music industry as we know it
Audius, a music distribution service that is enabled by the Ethereum blockchain, is ready to take on recognised tech giants in the industry such as Spotify and SoundCloud. The developers behind the service hope that their work is capable of offering a far more attractive deal for musicians, which will in turn build a strong enough roster of musicians to attract more users.
The Audius protocol dashboard indicates that the network has hosted 30,000 to 50,000 users on a daily basis since the end of October.
The Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of Audius, Roneil Rumburg, said that the response to the app is “real and exciting”.
“Especially in COVID-19, these [musicians] are really hurting. You can’t tour. Most revenue streams have dried up”, he explained.
The blockchain music distribution service experienced a massive surge in interest sometime around the end of October when it announced that it was distributing the network’s AUDIO token. This also marked the end of the application’s beta network phase.
Audius gave away 50 million AUDIO tokens to 10,000 super users. Most of the users who received the token comprised mainly of artists who were already using the Audius app, but the award also went to a few listeners who played many tracks and helped the development by consistently offering feedback.
Jesse Grushack, one of the pioneers of the blockchain music space, said that Audius was an exciting venture because it was ushering in a new community.
“The most exciting thing about Audius to me is that it’s not trying to create a new ecosystem with the same players. It’s bringing in a totally ‘virgin’ crypto community that until the release of $AUDIO probably had no idea they were using crypto.”
AUDIO is an ERC-20 token that is used for governance and as a security mechanism. Node operators and artists need to use the AUDIO tokens so that they can unlock a variety of features as well as earning opportunities.
While Audius was still in beta, the platform used an Ethereum sidechain called the POA network to run the content management side of the business. By late October, the developers announced that it was partially moving to the Solana blockchain.
Audius is mainly used for new artists to build their audience. The platform is currently dominated by EDM artists, with hip hop artists coming in as a close second.